August 16, 2012: Seven American soldiers were killed Thursday when their helicopter crashed in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter, although the insurgency often exaggerates its victories and is quick to claim responsibility for any incident involving foreign troop deaths.

The area where the helicopter went down is an insurgent hotbed and supply route, lying north of Kandahar city near volatile Zabul and Uruzgan provinces.

Next time someone wants to “nation build” in a culture dedicated to the values and customs of the eighth century, sens thirty thousand laptops with a good internet connection instead of thirty thousand young brave Americans. The whole place is not worth the death of one American.

President Bush had good intentions but what a dang mess. Bush never should have started this war with political correctness at the forefront. We should have gone in there, bomb the hell out of them and got out. What a shame that 1.7 trillion dollars later and a whole bunch of good people dying and we still have not accomplished a thing.

This is an outrage. The one topic I can’t help but post to. Iraq has also gone to hell, which many, including myself, predicted.

This war belongs to both Bush and Obama. The country would have been better off if Bush had done absolutely nothing after 9-11. I grieve for these young souls and I grieve for those who have been maimed. All for less than nothing.

I have a young friend over there. His first month in they lost 10 troops. He was in the group drop in Italy some months back where troops were lost. This kid is a hero to me! In just a few months he’s been through more than many of us old vets.

Please, please everyone keep the troops in your prayers! They have become invisible to far too many Americans.

I have a young friend over there. His first month in they lost 10 troops. He was in the group drop in Italy some months back where troops were lost. This young man is a hero to me! In just a few months he’s been through more than many of us old vets.

Please, please everyone keep the troops in your prayers! They have become invisible to far too many Americans.

We’re not fighting an ideology. They, the muslims, know we’re not fighting their religion. This is just some old criminals trying to hold on to their power. If you throw a life preserver to a drowning man and he tries to shoot you for doing it, then let him drown. Let the Afghans drown.

24
posted on 08/16/2012 7:03:12 AM PDT
by blueunicorn6
("A crack shot and a good dancer")

WTH is going on here? “President Bush shouldn’t have started this war”? “The country would have been better off if President Bush would have done nothing after 9-11”?

Anybody here at FR remember exactly who started this war? IIRC WE WERE ATTACKED. So now you all think we should have just sat on our asses and not “waste precious blood”.

As a retired soldier and current government contractor I can fully appreciate and agree with condeming the PC Bullshit that has corrupted our mission and conduct of operations. I can and will call out the current POSHMFIC and the limp-wristed Pentagon Rump Rangers who care more about world opinion than accomplishing the mission.

But I’ll be Goddamned if I’m going to sit idly by and listen to a bunch of handwringers whine about why we’re there! We need to rain such hell on the terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and anywhere else they hide that they beg for mercy. We need to cut all ties with any country that aids and abets such vermin. But we do not need to ever question why we are there.

A lot of people here think we should have nuked the place, even though the vast majority of Afghans or Iraqis had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.

It isn’t like our efforts to destroy the industrial base of Japan prior to WWII, who created the capability for the military which was a deliberate instrument of the government to attack America.

I am sympathetic to the argument that we should have gotten in, done the job toppled the governement and got out, but what, leave a vacuum there for another person to just jump in and restart the process?

We did the right thing by going in, we did the right thing by trying to get them on their feet. I believe criticism of when we should leave or have already left is justified and has merit.

I watched “Saving Private Ryan” recently, and had a thought as I watched the scene where the guy enters the cemetery in Normandy where the Americans lay under all those white crosses in meticulously manicured fields of grass.

That those countries over there treat our cemeteries with such deference and respect, even today, is remarkable. They do so because we had values and stood by them for the most part while executing the war. We tried our best to avoid civilian casualties in areas captured by the Germans and Japan, but carrying the war to its fullest on their own soil.

If we had carpet bombed France or Belgium the way we did Germany and Japan, I doubt our servicemen would be so venerated today.

I like the fact that we were willing to do what was right, that we didn’t treat Afghanistan or Iraq the same way the Soviet Union treated Afghanistan while they were there.

Thing is, many of these people screaming longly and loudly about us being there at all are the same people who would have screamed longly and loudly had we done nothing.

I respect and value what our military have done and have tried to do over there. What they have done is right, and it reflects well on us that we have tried. We haven’t done it well in some cases, and we have done it poorly in some cases.

But I don’t, and never have subscribed to turning the place into glass. As an American, I can be proud to say who I am and where I am from.

As you said, if it weren’t for 9/11, we wouldn’t have been there in the first place. I understand and appreciate your sentiments, though it seems few others do.

Next time someone wants to nation build in a culture dedicated to the values and customs of the eighth century, sens thirty thousand laptops with a good internet connection instead of thirty thousand young brave Americans. The whole place is not worth the death of one American.

We'd have had better success creating a "nation" of 10,000 cockroaches than these subhuman vermin. Next time, simply kill people and break things and get the hell out.

46
posted on 08/16/2012 11:57:28 AM PDT
by ScottinVA
(If Obama is reelected, America will deserve every mockery that follows.)

Thank you. I figured someone would get it right and I could just agree. Iraq was directly funding terrorism in a public manner, and Afghanistan was protecting the terrorist camps at which the 19 9/11 terrorists trained with the knowledge and support of the Afghan government. One can reasonably question the strategy selected, but we had every right to invade both countries, and in fact a duty to do so. When we invaded Baghdad, we captured and killed wanted terrorists who had murdered Americans. When we invaded Afghanistan, we captured and killed terrorists who personally participated in training and supporting the 9/11 hijackers.

48
posted on 08/16/2012 12:01:27 PM PDT
by Pollster1
(Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. - Ronald Reagan)

WTH is going on here? President Bush shouldnt have started this war? The country would have been better off if President Bush would have done nothing after 9-11? Anybody here at FR remember exactly who started this war? IIRC WE WERE ATTACKED. So now you all think we should have just sat on our asses and not waste precious blood.

As I understand Laz's comment, he is saying that the USA would be better off even if we did nothing at all in response to those attacks - and the comparison is based on the wealth and security and stability of the country. Do not forget that these wars cleaned up the treasury and put the national debt sky high. The USA lost the AAA rating for the same reason. This is another part of the price of war. There are other consequences too.

It is natural, when attacked, to strike back. However you do not want to strike back if that leaves you worse off. You perhaps want to use other means. If a banker wronged a man that man has a range of possibilities. He can stop using that bank; he can start a PR campaign against the bank; he can rob that bank; he can hurt the banker personally or his entire family. We all can agree that if you are denied a loan that you so desperately need, going out and setting fire to the bank's building is a wrong thing to do - it will hurt you more than the bank, and you will be worse off.

I do not think that "doing nothing" would be a good option. However it's just a single point along the curve, on its far left end. On the right end we have "nuke Afghanistan back into the days when the planet was new and shiny." You can select any point on that curve as your response. You could, for example, destroy Taliban, arrest OBL and get out, all within months. The active part of rounding up the jihadis ended after the failure at Tora Bora. The following years netted very little. When was the last report from Afghanistan about an arrest of an important terrorist on a battlefield?

We need to rain such hell on the terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and anywhere else they hide that they beg for mercy.

Not doing that is a big part of the problem. Soldiers are not police. Soldiers need to be given a target, then they destroy it. Soldiers should not be sent into alleys lined with IEDs, day after day after day. If an IED exploded in a town you respond with a larger IED, one that levels the whole town. This will put popular pressure on Taliban because now 10,000 Afghans have no homes. Right now it is completely safe for Afghans to support Taliban; it is even beneficial, considering that Taliban will regain the control over the country pretty soon (already happened in some provinces.)

And, of course, one has to always keep strategic goals in mind. Those goals are different from the motive of revenge. Those goals deal exactly with profit and loss statements on the level of countries. What is it exactly that USA was trying to do in first days of the armed response? Was it done? How much did that cost, in blood and in treasure? What was the next step? What did it buy us? And so on. Every war has to have specific, attainable goals. But the war in Afghanistan lost its goals after Tora Bora; US soldiers are now doing nation-building, training of Afghan army (with bloody results because of traitors,) patrolling dark alleys and roads infested with IEDs. Whenever soldiers shoot at the enemy they, instead of being simply asked how much new ammo they need, are being grilled about political correctness of the armed response. We are risking creating a new rite of passage in Afghanistan, where a boy has to go out and kill a NATO soldier to become a man. We are making IED experts just because there is demand for so many IEDs - someone is bound to survive long enough to learn the trade.

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